1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus for providing a printed record of data transmitted over common carrier communication lines from a pushbutton telephone. More particularly, the present invention relates to a printer/recorder apparatus adapted to make a permanent record of numeric information transmitted from a standard pushbutton telephone.
2. Background of the Prior Art
Facsimile, teletype and telescribe communications systems have been developed for transmitting orders from a plurality of outlying order-initiating stations to a central depot. Many of these systems use audio tones within the frequency range of audio tones used in a standard Touch Tone.TM. telephone because this regime affords compatability with common carrier communication lines. All prior art systems, however, require complex apparatus to encode information at a transmitting station and further require complex and expensive equipment to decode transmitted information at a receiving depot. Because of these limitations, such systems are used only by large corporations and have heretofore been economically unavailable to the general small businessman who must order his goods from a central supply point.
The prior art also teaches use of a standard 12-button Touch Tone.TM. telephone to transmit information over common carrier lines to a central computing facility. This art uses a telephone as a remote data terminal. It is also well known to provide a printer/recording apparatus located at an unattended telephone receiving station to record alphanumeric data from a pushbutton telephone encoded according to an arbitrary coding scheme. All prior art known to the applicant requires either a sophisticated computing system at the receiving station or use of a complex arbitrary coding scheme to allow the transmission of alphanumeric data from the Touch Tone.TM. pad of the telephone. The computer system is too expensive to be used by most small businesses and any system that uses an encoding scheme is too complex and prone to error to be used by lay operators. Because of these deficiencies in the prior art, no inexpensive, simple to operate, printed record order system had been developed that can be used by untrained operators of small businesses on a routine basis.
In virtually all situations where a plurality of outlying users place orders with a central supply depot, it is desirable to queue the orders and to provide a permanent indication of the time the order was placed so the supply depot can fill orders within a reasonable time and on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Prior to the development of electronic telephone switching systems, several systems were developed for providing a printed record or other visible indication at the called station of the number of a calling party or other information transmitted by the calling party. These early devices required special equipment at the telephone company's central station in addition to recording and display equipment at the receiving station. The prior art also reflects a number of specialized telephone data transmission and control systems that use specialized input and output devices. These include telegraph, facsimile and teletypewriter systems.
In Scantlin, U.S. Pat. No. 3,371,172, a communications system is disclosed utilizing a pushbutton telephone for transmission of pulse trains containing digital data to a called party's location. There a tone decoder is employed to convert tone trains into electrical impulses for controlling the operation of an information unit. Morgan, U.S. Pat. No. 3,515,814, describes how a pushbutton telephone may be used as the data communications link between an input terminal and a remote computer. Goldstein, U.S. Pat. No. 3,557,311, shows an input keyboard coupled to an associated printer for transmission of alphanumeric data from a pushbutton telephone and recording at the calling party's station of the transmitted message. Finally, Flanagan et al, U.S. Pat. No. 3,675,513, describes a pushbutton telephone transmission system comprising a modified typewriter coupled to a receiving station for providing a permanent record of data transmitted by the user at the sending station. The message may be input to the system either through a modified typewriter for automatically coding messages to be sent over the telephone or, alternatively, direct inputting of the message through manual actuation of the dial buttons on a pushbutton telephone set.
The closest prior art known to the inventor of the present invention is U.S. Pat. No. 3,870,821, which was issued Mar. 11, 1975 to Steury. Steury teaches a printer/recorder apparatus for use with a 12 or 16-key pushbutton telephone communication system wherein a relatively complex arbitrary code comprising two code groups, each group having a plurality of sub-groups, is used to transmit alphanumeric information to a remote unattended printer.